The most unfortunate omission, to me, is of the positive role bicycles could and should play in re-orienting communities toward local, pedestrian friendly focus and sense of place. Other than issues specific to DOT, here is very little on how bicycles could affect other aspects of city land use planning. There are recitations of the entities with which the Bike Plan needs to coordinate or integrate, but very little about the ends to which such coordination should be aimed. This, to me, is the greatest failure of the plan, a failure of ambition or vision to see a role for bicycles in creating a change in the fabric of the city.

In other plans the city makes, this one included, the city is creating a piece of paper that mandates the general shape and direction of future development and access to the right of way.

The reason past bike plans were not “enforcement documents” is because of totally vague and meaningless prose stating things like “staff shall report” in the plan, with no specific timeline, content, or importance to what the hell “staff” shall report on!

For me, the meat of the plan is in Chapter 2 – where the writers of the plan get down to brass tacks, and start assigning work load. From what I’ve read so far, there isn’t much beyond renaming the Bike TAC to the BPIG and generally carrying on as per usual. There are, of course, some bright spots in Chapter 2 – but they are few and far between a load of b.s. language about “staff” “reporting” to god knows whom about god knows what on an annual basis.

Like Linton’s article about sloppiness of the maps and routes in the plan, the policy goals are equally sloppy and vague. Yeah, sure, “it’s a draft”. All of our criticism would go away if we could get some truly open, competent, coordination with the bike community from the “staff” who are working on this plan.